The northern lights are a natural spectacle usually reserved for polar regions. Occuring mostly after intense solar activity, magnetic particles are attracted to the magnetic poles. The reason these are seen so much more in the winter than the summer is not because of the cold (temperature has nothing to do with the lights, they are many miles up in the atmosphere) but because that is the time when it is darker and the lights are easier to see. Most of these images were taken in September in Fairbanks, Alaska, one of the best places to see this phenomenon easily.